Demolition of US-built facility at Southeast Asian base raises new fears about a secret Chinese military deal

• A US-built facility at Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base was demolished in September, according to satellite images published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
• The changes revive concerns about a secret deal between Cambodia and China that would permit Beijing to set up a military presence at the base, giving it a strategically valuable vantage point.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Cambodia demolished a US-built building at a naval base there last month, adding to concerns about a secret deal allowing China’s military to use the base, even as Cambodia played down its actions.

Satellite images published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week showed the building, the Tactical Headquarters of the National Committee for Maritime Security, was torn down in September.

Another US-built facility nearby, the Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boat Ramp and Boat Maintenance Facility, is still standing in the photos, taken on October 1.

Tea Banh, Cambodia’s deputy prime minister and defense minister, confirmed the demolition but dismissed concerns. “We moved the facility to a new location. We can no longer keep it, and the building is already old,” he told AFP on Sunday.

The destruction revives concerns raised by a July 2019 Wall Street Journal report, citing US officials, describing a secret pact between Cambodia and China granting the latter access to the Ream Naval Base for decades, permitting Beijing to station military personnel, store weapons, and dock warships.

According to the report, China also agreed to build two piers, one for it and one for Cambodia, though experts said dredging would be needed for Chinese warships to use the facility.

On Saturday, the chief of Cambodia’s navy general staff confirmed that China was supporting a project to expand the port and build a ship repair facility there. The plan included dredging to deepen waters around the base, the officer told Nikkei Asia.

US officials learned of talks between China and Cambodia in 2018, prompting a letter from Vice President Mike Pence expressing concern about a Chinese naval base there. Concerns were piqued months later, when Cambodia suddenly turned down a US offer to repair facilities at the base.

That decision “fuel[ed] speculation” about “larger plans” for Ream “that involve hosting Chinese military assets,” Joseph Felter, US deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, wrote at the time.

Work at Ream isn’t the only concern. The US and others have lobbied Cambodia not to let China’s military use a new airport being built by a Chinese company about 40 miles northwest of Ream, a project that includes a seaport as well as tourist infrastructure.

The company building the airport has said it’s for commercial use, but the runways are long enough for Chinese military aircraft, including bombers. While announcing sanctions against that Chinese firm, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said there were “credible reports” that the facility could host the Chinese military.

Images published by CSIS’s Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative also show land-reclamation work being done by a Chinese company 3 miles north of Ream. The company has been doing the work since February and is one of many Chinese firms that have leased large plots of land around the base.

Cambodia’s government also said in February that the coastal area around Ream would be the site of a $16 billion tourist resort area.

The dredging for that land reclamation began only four days after the project was announced and may be related to port infrastructure for that resort project, AMTI said, adding that “with current facilities at Ream Naval Base only able to host small patrol ships, any large port development nearby bears watching.”

Projecting power

Ream is near Sihanoukville, a focal point for Chinese investment. A Cambodian official said in February that the government wants it to develop it into a industrial and commercial hub “like Shenzhen” in China.

Beijing has provided support Cambodia’s government even as other countries criticize its authoritarian record. US-Cambodia relations in particular have deteriorated in recent years. Phnom Penh has repeatedly denied that China will have a military presence at Ream, often calling those reports “fake news.”

AMTI director Greg Poling told Insider after The Journal report was published that a Chinese base at Ream was unlikely to resemble Beijing’s South China Sea outposts, comparing it instead to China’s base in Djibouti, its first overseas military installation, “which allows a modest Chinese rotational presence.”

While it wouldn’t give Beijing new power-projection capabilities in the South China Sea, a presence there would allow China to “project power, especially air power, over the Gulf of Thailand, Strait of Malacca, and Andaman Sea in a way it couldn’t before,” Poling added.

Other countries, including the US, have similar capabilities in the region, but strategic implications of such a base worry Cambodia’s neighbors.

The Malacca Strait is a major transit point between the Indian and Pacific oceans, including for the vast majority of China’s energy imports. It has grown in importance amid competition between China and its neighbors, particularly India.

Indian concern about China’s naval activity in the Indian Ocean has increased since Chinese submarines appeared there in 2014.

New Delhi has beefed up its naval and air capabilities and sought to improve its maritime awareness in the area, in part by boosting its presence in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, a valuable vantage point near the Straits of Malacca.

In late September, a US Navy P-8 Poseidon — considered the best sub-hunting plane in the world — landed at India’s base there for refueling, a first for US aircraft under a US-India logistics agreement signed in 2016.